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Peshmerga militia may be key to Iraqi
army’s success
5.7.2005
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Known for their fierce resistance to the Saddam
Hussein government, leaders of the Kurdish region's
"peshmerga" militia say their forces are now ready
to join the Iraqi National Army. But working
alongside the Arabs, the Kurds' former foe, may take
some time to getting used to. VOA's Patricia Nunan
visited a military base outside the city of Arbil,
in the Kurdish-controlled part of northern Iraq.
Young recruits for Iraq's National Army, learning
some of the basics. They're not like many of the
others who make up the new national force, because
these men are Kurds -- an ethnic minority from
Northern Iraq. And many of them still of think of
themselves first as "peshmerga" -- the name for the
Kurdish militias that spent decades fighting the
Saddam Hussein regime.
Their value as a fighting force is in little
dispute. The peshmerga were considered a key ally by
Washington in the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
And the relationship hasn't ended there. Kurdish
officials say many of the more than 1100 troops on
this base have received weapons from the United
States.
What they consider invaluable, however, says Captain
Sabir Ahmed, is the American training they have
received – designed to counter problems facing the
Iraq of today. "The Americans teach us how to run
checkpoints and search cars, and -- one thing that's
very important - how to carry out attacks to clear
terrorists from a house."
Officials here say there are some 600 Kurdish troops
fighting alongside U.S. and Iraqi forces in Arab
regions in Northern Iraq. But the bulk of the 60,000
Peshmerga fighters have not been permitted to
operate beyond the three provinces that make up the
Kurdish region.
And that's despite the Peshmerga's enthusiasm for
the idea of taking on the insurgency.
Hamid Effendi is the Minister of Peshmerga, based in
the city of Arbil. "I told them that we are ready to
go to inside of Mosul for example, or Kirkuk. We can
clear it from the terrorists."
Mr. Effendi says both Iraqi and U.S. leaders have
wanted to avoid perpetuating the perception of
ethnic division in Iraq that a unit of Kurdish
military fighting in Arab territory or against Arab
insurgents might suggest.
"They say to us that it is better for you to defend
on Kurdistan, to stay in Kurdistan only, because
there are differences between two nations - Kurds
and Arabs,” explains Mr. Effendi. “If we try to go
inside Mosul, maybe some of them say that the Kurds
want to attack Arabs. But it's not right. We want to
defend Arabs."
The Kurdish identity seems forged from the region's
hauntingly beautiful landscape and its people's
survival of the some of the worst oppression by the
Saddam Hussein regime. Hundreds of thousands were
killed and millions displaced in brutal crackdowns
designed to prevent the Kurds from becoming too
powerful.
That ended in 1991 when the U.S. imposed a strict
"no fly zone" over the Kurdish region. As a result,
the Kurds enjoyed virtual self-rule for the 12 years
between that war and the fall of Saddam in 2003.
That history has left some Kurdish leaders wary of
giving up complete control of the peshmerga. Adnan
Mufti is with the political party the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan.
"We are still afraid that there will be a change in
Baghdad and another dictatorship -- or another
decision there -- asking for the removal of the
rights of Kurds. We need peshmerga there, until we
see Iraq and Kurdistan with full democracy."
As a recent training exercise suggests, for many in
the Kurdish region, there may be no such thing as
being too careful. Like the peshmerga, they say they
are committed to being part of the new Iraq, but
only if their rights are guaranteed.
www.voanews.com
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